


For Women Who Are Difficult To Love

by Noccalula



Category: Agent Carter (TV), Daredevil (TV), Jessica Jones (TV), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: BAMF Claire Temple, BAMF Karen Page, Basically whatever flavor you want it in, Bisexuality, Blood, Canon-Typical Violence, Character Death, Claire Temple Deserves Better, Elektra does what Elektra fucking wants, Explicit Sexual Content, F/F, F/M, Female Friendship, Female-Centric, Femslash, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Inspired by Poetry, Introspection, Kastle if you squint, Lesbian Sex, Marvel 616/MCU Crossover, Multi, Non-Explicit Sex, Other, Pansexual Character, Poetry prompt, Prompt Challenge, Prompt Fic, Reader's Choice - Freeform, Reader-Insert, Romantic Angst, Romantic Friendship, Sibling Incest, Spoilers for pretty much all the Marvel things, Tell me what you want what you really really want, Tragedy/Comedy, Trauma, Unresolved Romantic Tension, Unresolved Sexual Tension, Warsan Shire, Women Being Awesome, maxicest
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-07-19
Updated: 2016-08-25
Packaged: 2018-07-25 11:09:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 10,988
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7530349
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Noccalula/pseuds/Noccalula
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"You are terrifying and strange and beautiful, something not everyone knows how to love." </p>
<p>Warsan Shire, <i>For Women Who Are Difficult To Love</i></p>
<p>Reader's choice prompts based on one of my favorite poems, in celebration of the powerful, fractured, strong, fragile, distant, warm, complicated, straightforward, deceptive, complex women of the MCU (with 616 for flavor if you're so inclined).</p>
<p>Tags will be constantly in flux as pieces are added.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Index

**Author's Note:**

> I was inspired by starlordandsavior's How To Say I Love You prompt series - it's a brilliant idea, executed beautifully, and I immediately wanted to do one of my own to keep smaller material coming while I'm working on bigger projects. 
> 
> I'm very, very excited to do something this interactive! As most of you who read my shit know, I'm kind of a hermit, so this is a nice change of pace. Hopefully you all enjoy it as much as I will.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I can be found on Tumblr as noccalula-writes - please enjoy!

The Concept

#  [For Women Who Are Difficult To Love by Warsan Shire](http://genius.com/Warsan-shire-for-women-who-are-difficult-to-love-annotated)

 "You are terrifying and strange and beautiful,

something not everyone knows how to love."

 

 

 

**The Roster**

  * ~~Natasha Romanov~~
  * ~~Wanda Maximoff~~
  * ~~Peggy Carter~~
  * ~~Sharon Carter~~
  * ~~Pepper Potts~~
  * Maya Hansen
  * Maria Hill
  * ~~Karen Page~~
  * Jeri Hogarth
  * ~~Claire Temple~~
  * ~~Elektra Natchios~~
  * ~~Jessica Jones~~
  * ~~Trish Walker~~
  * Helen Cho
  * Darcy Lewis
  * Jane Foster 



 

 

**The Pairings**

  * FC/Reader
  * FC/Shipped Character (Canon or non)
  * No Pairing, Introspection



 

 

 

** The Prompts **

  1. You Are A Horse Running Alone, And He Tries To Tame You
  2. An Impossible Highway
  3. ~~A Burning House~~
  4. ~~Blinding~~
  5. Forget You
  6. ~~Every Woman Before or After You~~
  7. The Memory of Taste
  8. ~~His Body Is A Long Shadow, Seeking Yours~~
  9. Too Intense
  10. ~~Unashamed and Sacrificial~~
  11. He Tells You, “No Man Can Live Up To The One Who Lives In Your Head”
  12. ~~Close Your Mouth, Be Softer, Prettier~~
  13. ~~Volatile~~
  14. ~~Split His Head Open~~
  15. ~~You Can’t Make Homes Out of Human Beings~~
  16. ~~If He Wants To Leave, Let Him Leave~~



 

 

 

** The Rules **

  * Specify if you want Character/Reader, a ship (I'm flexible), or just character introspection (which may or may not mention a ship, depending no the character
  * Specify your character of choice
  * Specify your number
  * I will try not to repeat characters or prompts unless I get enough requests that I can double through the numbers.
  * I don't really like rules
  * Go read Warsan Shire, seriously. She's amazing. 
  * Enjoy!



 

 

Thank you, and I hope you all enjoy this as much as I'm enjoying the concept!


	2. Split His Head Open (Elektra)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Taking initiative on her own terms was a lifelong trend of Elektra’s._
> 
>  
> 
> Elektra, an axe, business, and memories.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm not sure this entry actually constitutes blood play but I'm going to give a fair warning anyway - this chapter talks about blood, violence, and sexuality as well as underage masturbation. It earns its Mature rating by a country mile but isn't necessarily Explicit. 
> 
> I love Elektra of any stripe, so this works for both the Netflix series and the 616.

# Split His Head Open

Requested by lilacsandlostlovers

_Elektra, introspection (Elektra/Matt, Elektra/Female Characters for flavor but not the main crux)_

 

_Press play – “Ache,” FKA Twigs_

Elektra stays so long that she watches the blood coagulate on the cold pavement at her feet. The sheen on her hands catches the light from the distant swinging bulb as she turns her hands over to inspect, noting over the minutes, the hours how it dries and begins to flake away. So much metaphor in that.

 

The small axe embedded in the back of her target’s skull was not planned upon in the slightest. He’d come more prepared for an execution than even she had anticipated – that bothers her, the lack of anticipation on her own part, Elektra has smelled fear on men before they even knew they were afraid and yet this one managed to bring a goddamn axe to a rendezvous point with her having only the faintest inclination it was there – but it was all for naught, as usual. Who he pissed off was irrelevant. The money was decent enough – he wasn’t a CEO or some such, more like a hired gun who overstepped his boundaries – and the specifics merged nicely with this month’s schedule, so this was more of a stopover than a highlight. Still, the sound of the axe cracking wetly into the back of his head once she’d wrangled it free from his grip in a series of smooth, devastating twists and yanks was haunting her, echoing off the empty cement walls. Nobody parked down here. Nobody would find him for weeks, maybe longer.

 

Her trench coat was spattered with blood, too dark to be stained thankfully, and the briefcase she had used as a lure lay upended some feet away, bills fanning out into dovetails of the least poetic design. Money. It’ll get you killed every time.

 

The flaking crimson on her long, slender fingers brought back memories, memories that weren’t even a little bit appropriate for the moment. Boarding school. Pressing careful digits into her bleeding, slick opening. Curious. Fearless. The other girls had said sex hurt the first time, or that it was supposed to. Elektra always was a go-getter; perforating her hymen herself seemed like the prudent thing to do. Why let it hurt when you could just get the hard part over with? Much to her pleasant surprise, much of her youth spent doing long splits and horseback riding had taken care of most of the work for her, leaving little in the way of pain. Mostly it was just uncomfortable at first as she sat on the floor, legs astride a vanity mirror, watching with a slack jaw as she took initiative on her own terms.

 

Taking initiative on her own terms was a lifelong trend of Elektra’s.

 

It didn’t stop with her. There were other girls in boarding school and well beyond, all memories of plush mouths and soft bodies, fingers enveloped in wet heat. Blood, sometimes. Boys too, lean bodies and too-new voices shifting into something that began to acknowledge the power it had already been handed by no merit of its own. It all ran the same temperature for Elektra – attraction was a strike straight to the bone, not a set of standards determined by qualifiers. She only fell in love the one time – she’s not going to think about him right now, not sitting here with blood drying on her hands, she _will not_ think about Matt Murdock with blood drying on her hands – but what’s love to someone who wants fire? It doesn’t need to last forever, it just needs to run hot for a little while. When the temperature drops and the wind changes direction, she’ll be gone again.

 

The axe crunching into the man’s skull and splitting his head open onto the pavement sounded like a knife into a melon. It was one of the most satisfying noises she could recall. Therein lay the truth she couldn’t lay bare before anyone, the fact of the matter she knew she could never say out loud: this isn’t just a job for her. She loves this.

 

She can masturbate in front of a full length mirror. She can fuck a woman until she’s screaming, legs shaking, incoherent and keep their eyes locked all the while. She can ride a man until he has to admit in heaving sobs of moans that he can’t keep up, he can’t match her, beg for mercy. She can shatter someone’s pride into splinters on the ground and grin the entire time, admit the darkest parts of her sexual self in sweet whispers into the ear of someone she’ll never see again.

 

Elektra can’t admit out loud that the blood turns her on, that the act of killing is satisfying. It’s not orgasmic, per se – apples and oranges, maybe more like tiramisu and crème brulee – but it’s not _unlike_ sexual arousal either. There’s a thrumming of her nerves as she comes back to herself, the memories of stroking herself to completion somehow emulsing into the here and now, the cold garage, the now-cold body mere moments away from full rigor. If she’s going to move him, now’s the time before he’s so goddamn stiff she could pick him up by the feet and fence with the poor bastard.

 

Elektra stands with a long stretch and groan before coming to put her boot squarely between the man’s shoulders, giving one good yank to free the handy little axe. It’s a wieldy little thing, nice and light but swift and deadly like her own set of Sais – she always did like a weapon with a personal touch, guns are just so goddamn clinical – and she has no plans to leave it here when it could come along for a hell of a ride, be put to good use somewhere else.

 

Despite her best efforts, she does the thing she wasn’t supposed to do. She thinks of Matt, thinks of his judgment, his pity. It’s tempting to feel shame for only a fraction of a moment, but time and distance has bought her some perspective she might not have had otherwise, and she likes to think she’s moved beyond fearing his or anyone else’s judgments of her.

 

Matt and anyone else can think what they want, shun her methods, call her too much or reckless until they’re all blue in the face, but Elektra remembers one thing:

 

Her first time didn’t hurt at all.


	3. You Can't Make Homes Out Of Human Beings (Wanda)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _8\. Sam reminds her, for the umpteenth time, that he’s a counselor certified in crisis intervention and that even if she’s not comfortable talking to him, he can find her someone to talk to. This give and take has resulted in Wanda getting up and walking away from him at various tables all over the Avengers training compound for months now. Today, she simply pushes her oatmeal around the bowl and doesn’t answer. This is considered progress._
> 
> 20 snaps of Wanda without Pietro.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Any of you who are familiar with me on AO3 know I'm a big fat Maxicest garbage fire (see: I Don't Hear The Church Bells Chime Anymore) so the Maxicest should come as a shock to no one. 
> 
> That said, it's not explicit, and if you squint hard enough I suppose you can blur it out if you're uncomfortable.
> 
> I also apologize for the format - there was no way for me to get this onto AO3 that wasn't ugly, I tried to get the least visually offensive one possible.

# You Can’t Make Homes Out Of Human Beings

 

Requested by lilacsandlostlovers

_Wanda Maximoff, Maxicest grief and self-care, trauma recovery_

_Press Play: “Fourth of July,” Sufjan Stevens_

 

  1. Upon their return from Sokovia, Wanda spends every evening beside the metal casket in the furthest reaches of the medical bay for two and a half months until, suddenly, a switch is hit inside of her and she can’t bear to look at it. Pietro lays silent and still beneath the medical grade plastic, oxygen dutifully pumped into and out of his inanimate lungs. His brain waves do not change. He does not wake up.



Clint calls the meeting, makes his case to the entire team as gently as possible. He uses words like “unethical” and “unnatural”. His sad eyes plead with Wanda from across the communal table, and she can feel the eyes of everyone else watching her with something between pity and wariness, maybe even fear. Wanda isn’t known for taking emotional strife well. Clint asks the thing he’s been tiptoeing around, the thing they’ve all been tiptoeing around – Pietro is dead. He’s not coming back. It’s time to stop keeping him alive in a machine that isn’t going to save him.

Wanda wants to shatter every glass pane on the floor. She wants to scream so loud it wracks the building down to its basements, down to the roots deep into the city streets. She wants to open up a hole above the city and finish what a race of aliens in 2012 started, collapse it all in on itself, damn the gods and damn the earth and goddamn anyone with a kind word in their heart.

She takes a deep breath and steadies herself, listens to her own breathing, her own heartbeat until she’s able to whisper her assent.

 

  1. Pietro’s heart stops again and it’s no different than the last time – she feels her own still in her chest for those awful few seconds before it marches on with its traitorous cadence. She keeps on breathing. Pietro’s softly stops, her hand in his, even the force of her very powerful will not enough to make him stay with her.



 

  1. It’s days before she can eat. It’s weeks before she speaks. Pietro is in an urn on her mantel. Sometimes she sits with the damn thing on the floor, dipping her fingertips into the silt-like ash and trying to will the pieces of something long gone apart back together.



 

  1. Steve holds her hand at the memorial service. She doesn’t fight.



 

  1. She will never, ever recover. She’s bound and determined. Never. The loss of Pietro sits like an open wound between her ribs and she can’t touch her own skin, can’t even consider touching herself at night without the ache of grief pouring rivers of rot, of pus from the abscess of her heart.



 

  1. She participates in training, focuses hard on anything that keeps her out from between her own ears for a little while, and is able to levitate before long. Grief has built channels into her that she can pour herself into, little by little, until that power can be used in other ways. Her pain is water on a hydroelectric dam - it might be crushing but at least it’s becoming fucking useful.



 

  1. Months in, Tony trips and falls. Wanda laughs, actually laughs, when the aging superhero hits the mat. His incredulous glare falls when he sees her face, lips curving into something like a smirk as everyone around her tries not to spook her like she’s a wild rabbit standing at the edge of the garden fence. She chuckles about the fall all day. Even lying in her bed that night, a time which she usually uses to do nothing but touch all the cold metal sides of the emptiness Pietro left her with, she replays the whole thing in her mind’s eye. Somehow, the more she thinks about it, the funnier it gets until she’s laughing alone in her bed.



 

  1. Sam reminds her, for the umpteenth time, that he’s a counselor certified in crisis intervention and that even if she’s not comfortable talking to him, he can find her someone to talk to. This give and take has resulted in Wanda getting up and walking away from him at various tables all over the Avengers training compound for months now. Today, she simply pushes her oatmeal around the bowl and doesn’t answer. This is considered progress.



 

  1. Wanda feels guilty for laughing at anything, even though she knows nothing would have delighted Pietro more than the tandem experience of the sound of her laughter and watching Tony Stark fall flat on his face.



 

  1. Natasha sits across from Wanda in a windowsil when they’ve returned from their first successful mission as Avengers. The rest of the team is celebrating, Cap beaming like a proud father at how smoothly the rescue situation went off without a hitch. Wanda can hear the laughter from rooms away. Nat doesn’t touch her, just watches out the window in the same erstwhile direction, as she explains that the best way she’s ever heard anyone explain grief was that it was like carrying a rock around in your pocket. Wanda turns to look at Natasha questioningly, eyes lingering over that stunning profile, those light eyes still gazing off into whatever middle-distance it is that Natasha spends most of her time in.



“At first, you can’t imagine how you’re ever gonna get used to it. It’s ridiculous, right? There’s this…heavy thing in your pocket and it’s constantly pulling at you, constantly driving you crazy and you can’t get comfortable to save your life. You can’t stop thinking about the rock in your pocket.”

Wanda doesn’t answer. Natasha doesn’t look at her.

“But you do. Stop, that is. You get used to it, the way it fucks up your balance becomes your new normal. You learn to lean with it the right way and it stops feeling strange, it’s just a part of standing up and walking around and being alive. You might even forget about it from time to time.”

Sighing, Natasha finally turns to stare across at Wanda in that shrewd, understated way of hers.

“But then you put your hand in your pocket and you remember it’s there. It never went away. You just got used to it.”

“I don’t want to get used to it,” Wanda says quietly.

Natasha just looks back out at the field, the chopper being cleaned and readied to be available at a moment’s notice at a time when there’s not a party inside. She just gazes out and says nothing, because she knows Wanda will, whether she likes it or not.

 

  1. The first time she sees her therapist, Wanda’s hands shake through the entire appointment. It takes half an hour to get her to speak in any way other than curtly answering questions, but finally, a floodgate breaks and she realizes half an hour has passed without her stopping to catch her breath. It pours out of her, this infection she’s been carrying around and cherishing the awful pull of from the moment she felt Pietro be struck down. She tells the therapist that he was her lover as well as her twin brother. The admonishment she was waiting for in return never comes, only a quiet nod and a soft look between scribbles on a pad.



 

  1. Tensions are rising in the team. Tony and Steve can’t come to consensus more often than they can. There’s electricity in the air when the whole team is together – the rare times that Iron Man knocks the dust off to join forces – and Wanda intimately knows the signs of a brewing civil unrest when she sees it.



 

  1. Natasha buys her Lush bath bombs and bath-taking becomes a new hobby, both for her own sanity and the sake of her perpetually aching muscles. Tony orders a specialty tub, big enough that she could comfortably stretch out in, without her even asking. It makes her uncomfortable but she says thank you and uses it religiously. Religion, curiously, provides some solace; Wanda doesn’t know if she believes in anything anymore, all her long-built principles and platforms having crashed down to the earth with the rubble of the city that birthed her, but the rituals she remembered from childhood have resurfaced like so much driftwood in the wreckage of her past. She lights incense, ordered online from a shop in Romania. She keeps pictures, a decanter, some pieces of rock from the memorial site and Pietro’s ashes on a newly crafted altar with an old rosewood rosary.



The only photograph she has of Pietro is from the security footage of Sokovia, mere minutes before his death. He’s blurry but there, sharp blue eyes fixed on something in the distance she can never know, his hair whipping back behind him.

There is nothing more hurtful in the world than that picture. There is nothing more comforting in the world than that picture.

 

  1. Wanda’s breaking point comes in her therapist’s office. She sobs and sobs until she’s gagging, until she can’t even pretend to be calm anymore and the windows are rattling, but her therapist isn’t afraid. They come over to her slowly, carefully, and kneel down beside her to let her cry, only not alone. In the end, the damage is a destroyed vase and compromised cracks in the floor to ceiling window – nothing that can’t be easily replaced.



Wanda goes for a walk alone afterward, feeling like the clouds are finally parting to cast gentle sun down on the devastation of her life. She can’t articulate it well but it feels like a thunderhead has finally cracked open and dispersed, leaving her with the remnants of a life that she still hasn’t figured out how to live without her other half, her home.

Home is abstract now. Maybe it always should have been.

Her therapist taught her the term “co-dependency”. She’s still sitting in a very uncomfortable place with that idea, but she’s not flinching away from it anymore either.

The walk home is peaceful and quiet, a hoodie and no makeup buying her some anonymity but otherwise she sticks to the park route. The birds sing. There are no cities collapsing. The dread at the pit of her stomach uncoils itself a little.

 

  1. It’s almost six months to the day they let Pietro die quietly in New York City that she finally finds the urge to masturbate strong enough to act on. She can’t come, she cries, but the fact that she tried at all is a victory unto itself.



Her therapist has her doing ‘homework’ in the form of journal entries, writing down her dreams, trying to document when the anxiety spikes that still plague her happen. The staff nutritionist has her writing down everything she eats, trying to keep her above a certain caloric intake, concerned that her physical activity is too high for someone with so little body mass. It seems like she’s always jotting things down, half in her native tongue but increasingly more and more in English. She’s not sure how she feels about this. A corkboard arrives in her room one day and she doesn’t have to ask who sent it, only quietly hangs her myriad collection of post-its with half-coded scribbles with little pushpins.

 

  1. The Avengers assemble to stop a terrorist cell from bombing a marketplace in Belarus. Wanda finds herself more active this time than in the past, more aggressive than she’d had the confidence to be when they first began venturing out. As Rhodey divebombs into a building to clear it of any enemy cells, Wanda creeps up behind a man with an automatic assault rifle and curls her fingers behind his ears, slipping her way into his mind with nary a hitch.



The resounding feeling is the most familiar one in the world to her now – grief. Profound, awful grief. She sees him crouched in the rubble of a drone strike, holding his sister, sobbing so had he can barely breathe as warm blood pools into his hands and seeps into his clothes. She remembers Sokovia, watching protestors be gassed off the streets of their own city. She remembers Pietro, losing him in the smoke and all the fear that choked into her throat and burned her eyes when she couldn’t find him, her heart screaming out through her raw voice. She remembers how warm and limp his hand was in the moments after his death, how long it took him to become cold.

Steve finds Wanda sitting on the dirty pavement, her arm curled around the man’s head as he sobs into her shoulder, unable to leave him.

She joins her first support group after that.

 

  1. Vision wears sweaters now. It’s almost cute but mostly disturbing. The way he looks at her – He? Did anyone ever ask Vision if He was the right term? – is consistently wide-eyed and awed, like she’s being puzzled together in some way that might make sense if the viewer squinted just right and caused all the pieces to align in the light. Wanda doesn’t have to be told what that look is. What she can’t say is that, while it’s sweet, it will never be returned.



 

  1. It takes eight meetings before Wanda is able to speak out in group therapy and even that speech is half-truth, half lie by omission. She can’t tell these people that her dead brother is the only person she can think about to get aroused, or that the memory of his kisses only ache a little less than they did six months ago, or that she’s pretty goddamn sure she never wants to be touched or kissed by anyone else. “Demisexual” is a term her therapist throws at her but Wanda isn’t ready to think too hard about the future, about what might be coming down the road in terms of relationships. It’s still too soon, too raw to even play near the entrance of that one.



 

  1. Steve Rogers finds Bucky Barnes and everything changes.



 

  1. Wanda’s not ready, but she’s not sure she ever will be, either. Maybe this is as close to ready as she’s ever going to get.



 

 

 


	4. His Body Is A Long Shadow Seeking Yours (Karen)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Matt had honored her barely stammered request for time and distance, but the Devil of Hell’s Kitchen had most certainly not. A glimpse of red from the corner of her eye, a long shadow cast from a broken floodlight had only happened once but once was enough to know he was watching. Watching? Matt was blind. This made so little fucking sense that she could hardly made the neural link._
> 
>  
> 
> Karen knows she's being followed. She's not sure if she's flattered or furious.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Karen/Matt canon typical, Kastle if you squint hard, Karen & Frank's weird bond for sure. 
> 
> Spoilers: Pretty much everything. This is immediate post 2x13 after the big reveal.

# His Body Is A Long Shadow Seeking Yours

Requested by OceansOfHours

_Karen, Karen/Matt, post 2x13_

_Press Play – “Last Orders,” Nothing But Thieves_

 

 

_I’m Daredevil._

 

The words were a bombshell between Karen’s ears, a constantly resonating explosion that was somehow louder than all the other explosions she’d been subject to since this entire shitshow turn of events had started.

 

Grotto fleeing for his life from an invisible Frank Castle before she even knew who Frank Castle was. _Boom_. Frank’s abandoned house. _Boom_. Kissing in the rain, losing her breath. _Boom_. “Will you have dinner with me?” _Boom_. Nelson and Murdock will represent Frank Castle. _Boom_. A beautiful woman in Matt’s bed while an old man sat in the living room. _Boom_? “I just want you to know, you were always safe” _BOOM_ Matt’s defensiveness when she compared Daredevil to Frank – how on earth could she have known, she couldn’t have fucking known – **_BOOM BOOM BOOM_** “Do you hear me, Frank!? If you do this you are dead to me” **BOOM** fucking blam bang, onomatopoeia, what the fuck ever.

 

“I’m Daredevil.” The whistling of shell casings heading her way. The eerie quiet until suddenly everything around her was atomized at the exact same moment that it all started making sense.

 

It’s a good thing Karen wasn’t a prone addictive personality, at least not that she’d encountered yet. Maybe she’d just never met her poison of choice yet. If she had, she’d be guzzling it solely to get out of her own head.

 

Matt had honored her barely stammered request for time and distance, but the Devil of Hell’s Kitchen had most certainly not. A glimpse of red from the corner of her eye, a long shadow cast from a broken floodlight had only happened once but once was enough to know he was watching. _Watching_? Matt was blind. This made so little fucking sense that she could hardly made the neural link.

 

And yet, there he had been, with his metaphorical heart and literal mask in his hands as he stood before her. Just a boy asking a girl to love him and the masked vigilante he was half of the time. Well, to be fair, he had not used this to ask for her to come back to him, only to reveal his truth to her as genuinely as he knew how. Karen could tell from the look on his face that this was as earnest as he could have been with her, trying his hardest to show her the respect he knew he’d failed to give when they were dating – but there was something else there, she had to admit. Matt was devastated. The sadness around him was palpable. Was this for how things had ended with her? With Foggy? With the woman in his bed?

 

Even when he was standing there telling her the naked truth, Karen couldn’t shake that there was something still left unsaid. It had left marks all over Matt’s face and dampened the air around him.

 

When the shock wore off enough that Karen could think something other than _Matt is Daredevil, Matt is Daredevil, Matt is Daredevil_ it occurred to her that however frightening and shocking it was for her to hear, it had to be equally as hard for him to say. Matt wasn’t stupid – surely he’d weighed the risks of telling her this secret.

 

As much as Karen appreciated what finally came to be the truth from Matt after all the being lied to, she had to admit – she was scared.

 

Because as much as she hated being lied to, Karen was more afraid of being fridged.

 

The idea that her shooting of his assistant was just as likely to get her killed by Fisk as being Daredevil’s love interest was of little comfort.

 

So Matt may have agreed to leave her alone until she was ready to talk to him but the vigilante on the rooftop above her had made no such deal. This was likely the root of all their problems – the rules that apply to Matt Murdock don’t apply to The Devil of Hell’s Kitchen, and he knows it. How do you make a relationship work when one half of it plays dual roles? If she were to reconsider her position, would it make her part of a couple or a triad, with the horned helmet serving as the constant reminder that there is a third party present in their bed, one that can pull Matt away on a whim and at a moment’s notice. One that she would always play second fiddle to.

 

Karen may not have always demanded the best for herself, but she was on the path of learning to, and one thing Karen Page was not willing to do was be second place to anyone or anything, least of ways a red costume.

 

Karen knew Matt had meant to be seen on the rooftop. He was too good at this to be caught accidentally, especially by someone he was following with the utmost attentiveness. He wanted her to know she was safe. She wonders if Frank is doing the same thing, if they’ll encounter each other on some old building’s highest point, both watching her on the sidewalk for any sign of danger.

 

Maybe she shouldn’t flatter herself.

 

It’s a good night for a drink.

 

 

 

 


	5. Blinding (Claire)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _By the time Matt Murdock showed up in Claire’s life, she had come full circle, back to a place of compassion for both the people around her and herself. Young Claire had been so insistent on being untouchable and ferocious that she had eschewed any vulnerability, decried it as weakness. Grown Up Claire recognized vulnerability as strength, even if running from that vulnerability was still an instinct that had to be repressed._
> 
> Claire Temple's mercy will save us all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Spoilers: Daredevil (both seasons) and Jessica Jones
> 
> Some Claire/Matt observation, mentions of Claire/OFC.

# Blinding

 Requested by lilacsandlostlovers

 

_Claire, introspection_

_Spoilers, Daredevil (both seasons) and Jessica Jones_

_Press play – “This Isn’t It,” Giant Drag_

 

Everyone acts like Matt Murdock is the great love that Claire had lost, like they were the respective One That Got Away without so much as a question to Claire about how she really felt. Foggy – who Claire liked, really she did – had even made the assumption that Matt had left her, more than likely out of some moral higher-calling bullshit stemming out of his masked vigilante night job. The notion struck Claire as strange but reminded her that in the grandest of schemes, she would still be looked at as an accessory to his story and not the protagonist of her own story. Time, distance had given her the gift of clarity on the matter, and Claire could see the situation for what it was without having to step foot into it to find out. Foresight was both a blessing and a curse this way.

Claire Temple was not in love with Matt Murdock. Did she really like him? Sometimes. The chemistry, the attraction was her primary goalpost for all their interactions, a sexual pull to him that she couldn’t deny any more than he could deny his. His altar boy proselytizing was interesting until it wasn’t, alluring in his convictions and his devotion to them until she saw how hard his feet were cemented into the pavement and how little he was ever going to budge. Nurturing him, mothering him, was going to be a lifelong job for some woman if he never came around to climbing down off the pedestal and Claire was not the one to be coaxing cats down from trees of their own making.

Sometimes she wondered what it might have been like to fuck him, or to be with someone who spent so much of their time in danger, and it was a fun fantasy for a few minutes but that’s as far as it had ever progressed. Maybe it would have been different if circumstances had. Maybe not. Claire is always too goddamn busy to consider alternatives.

This isn’t to say Claire’s never been in love. She’s loved. Claire has loved so fucking fiercely that it’s blinded her terrified partners before, men who felt intimidated by the intensity of her stare or the ferocity of her touch, the depth of her kisses, the aggression of her affection. Men who – as per all of her friends – were never even close to worthy of her. Men who left her disappointed and sad but undeterred, walking down city streets on hot nights with her closest friends in a posse of short denim shorts and scuffed _chanclas_ and knockoff Keds, dissecting why they were inadequate and inferior and pondering what exactly it would take to find the perfect man. The Claire Temple that exists now has not always been a Claire Temple who didn’t suffer fools – maybe as a result of having suffered far too many of them.

Claire never did find the perfect man. She found a pretty great woman for a little while, though.

She was from Boston. She had a hideous laugh and big, curly hair. Claire fell so hard it was absolutely stupid, felt like falling off a building and grinning all the way to the pavement. It was all fucking in the afternoons near open windows when the heat was too much to bear without a breeze, in between classes at med school. She was going to be an x-ray tech. They shared a thousand vending machine and hospital cafeteria dinners, late nights and early mornings whizzing past with barely a touch between them in the bedlam of an inner city hospital for certification hours. Claire thought she saw the future in her eyes when they were together – maybe this was the place to lay it all down, put bricks into mortar and begin building for the eventuality of their lives together. Their bare legs tangled in the cheap sheets. Lint rolling each other’s scrubs. Scorching the coffee until they both figured out exactly how the new maker worked. All of this security and intimacy felt like safety to Claire, and she was more than ready to drop anchor, spend her life in a career of daring and adrenaline while home was a warmly feathered nest to retreat to.

Claire got placed to Metro General. Her partner got an offer upstate with better money. She left.

As grateful as Claire was that she found out sooner rather than later that the relationship was second priority to the job (and she was grateful, truly, it could have been so much worse had the illusion continued on any further), ‘bitter’ didn’t quite cover it. Claire had let her guard all the way down only to have that tenderly exposed trust betrayed and without the wisdom and distance of time, it all felt too personal, too pointed an attack on her autonomy.

Claire didn’t get involved with anybody for a few years after that. All relationships were purely sexual, mutually beneficial arrangements. Any interaction with those partners was short and sweet – Claire’s career inherited the fire she used to pour over her partners, and she built a reputation in her hospital that got her noticed and quickly.

Of course, time heals all wounds, or at least most of them. It tempered into something more tolerable after a while once the pain had subsided. The partners were fewer and further between but generally more courteously regarded. Claire didn’t hurl herself headlong into work to avoid her feelings and learned to sit with disappointment and heartache, even when it was hard, even when it felt fruitless. Those rough edges were still sharp enough to snag someone on – and they did, from time to time – but the kindness Claire had spent an entire youth trying to bury beneath hardness that would protect it made its way back to the surface in small, gentle waves.

By the time Matt Murdock showed up in Claire’s life, she had come full circle, back to a place of compassion for both the people around her and herself. Young Claire had been so insistent on being untouchable and ferocious that she had eschewed any vulnerability, decried it as weakness. Grown Up Claire recognized vulnerability as strength, even if running from that vulnerability was still an instinct that had to be repressed.

That compassion was what had her looking sidelong at Jessica Jones’ bare thigh, carefully applying stitches to skin that would heal faster than anyone’s had the right to. It also had her sitting vigil next to the unconscious body of the (absolutely stunning) man Jessica had persuaded her to rescue before the hospital staff noticed that needles couldn’t penetrate his skin.

Compassion sent Claire onto the roof of the hospital with two cups of shitty coffee to check on Matt as he kept his gargoyle vigil over the hospital on the night her boss was murdered and all hell broke loose. Instinct, years of self-preservation told her that cutting off from Matt when she did was wisdom and that any continued contact was a bad idea; her heart reminded her that he was sitting on that roof utterly alone and feeling helpless, unable even to come down and say hello to his best friend. Better sense told her fuck him, he’s earned this place he finds himself in. Kindness told her the right thing to do was to reach out and try.

So no, Claire was never in love with Matt Murdock. She could have been – he had shown up at just the right time, as she was coming back to herself from the long sleep of cynicism and pain, seeing clearly for the first time in maybe ever – but she hadn’t let herself fall that far, not that quickly, not for this.

The irony that this man was blind had not escaped her.


	6. A Burning House (Natasha)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _  
> Natasha sat on a distant log fence, perched low enough to be mistaken for a fence post if someone happened past and caught the glow of the burning house. No one was going to pass by. This place was isolated by design. These people aimed to stay hidden for the rest of their lives – a feat that might have proved doable if not for the infamous Black Widow being given the assignment of their demise. Infamous. Natasha dug a boot into the cold hard dirt only enough to pill it a little, disturb the smoothness of what had likely been frozen solid for months until recently._
> 
> Sometimes, Natasha can't find a single thing in herself worth redeeming - the worst of which being her complete lack of interest in redemption.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Not too spoiler-y unless you somehow have managed to have no idea what happened in the first Avengers movie. 
> 
> Natasha/Clint or Natasha & Clint platonic, could be read either way.

# A Burning House

Requested by OceansOfHours

_Natasha, introspection_

_Press Play – “500 Miles (Live)”, Peter Paul and Mary_

 

 

**_If you miss the train I’m on, you will know that I am gone_ **

**_You can hear the whistle blow a hundred miles_ **

**_A hundred miles, a hundred miles_ **

**_A hundred miles, a hundred miles_ **

**_You can hear the whistle blow a hundred miles_ **

 

 

Krasnoyarsk Krai, near the Stony Tunguska River  
April 3rd, 2004

 

 

The adrenaline buzzing through Natasha’s body kept her from feeling the full extent of her injuries (and blessedly continued to do so until she was almost back to the train station). Lugging the rapidly lightened fuel can across the hardwood floors of the living room, Natasha gave a small grunt and poured the rest into a notch between two upended boards, the split between them a perfect steeple of splinters. A cold shiver ran up her spine as she considered that she’d landed on this piece during the fight for her life mere moments before, a chilled spot against the back of her ribs suggesting her body suit may have protected her from broken skin but a nasty bruise was coming. It would hardly be alone.

 

The man who lay on the floor before the hearth, his neck bent at a sickening angle, had put up less of a fight than his wife, who lay sprawled across the bottom few steps of the staircase in a pool of blood growing darker by the moment. It was climate typical for April in Siberia, hardly balmy but not quite as blisteringly cold as it had been until only weeks before, pleasantly sharp and chill but not prohibitive. The farm house was old – Natasha had known this on sight alone – and it almost pained her to have to set fire to the damn thing.

 

Conversely, a fire to warm herself by did not sound like the worst thing in the world either.

 

Natasha was mindful to kick the woman’s limp foot before approaching any closer, hardly a spring chicken at this even at such a young age. The decisive bullet to the head had put a sudden end to what was an increasingly quick and dirty fight; this woman – this scientist, if her documents were correct – had known full well she was fighting for her life and did so with a style alarmingly similar to Natasha’s own.

 

She opted not to pull on that thread too hard until the fire was burning.

 

 

 

Manhattan

May, 2012

Stark Tower

 

 

Natasha watches the hole above her close, sees the blur of red and gold falling from unthinkable height. The scepter reverberates a rattling all the way down into her guts and she holds on tight, keeps her feet planted, and begs for it to be over quickly if the goddamn thing is going to explode in her hands or something. That’s fate’s kind of funny, after all.

 

Tony drops past like a stone in the ocean and she’s helpless against the sickening realization: he’s going to die, probably screaming inside of his suit.

 

Natasha catches herself holding her breath – anything can hurt less if you learn how to put enough distance between your head and your heart – until she hears the Hulk screech like ripping metal and she knows that Tony is safe.

 

She didn’t know how much of a shit she gave about these people – save Clint - until that moment.

 

 

 

Krasnoyarsk Krai

April 3rd, 2004

 

 

_Natalia. Her form was perfect, ideal although she wasn’t quite as thin as the ballerina standard would hold to according to her trainers. She was a little shorter than the others, curvier much earlier, but her form was fucking impeccable. If she couldn’t be the physical ideal, she would make up with the brute force of absolute perfection. The Red Room demanded absolute perfection – nothing short would be tolerated to live._

 

The fire curled black smoke up through the chimney alone at first, no sign from the outside that anything was wrong save the sheer volume of it, until the windows began to glow orange and yellow. Soon the roof would give way somewhere near the middle when the upper floor began to collapse – the accelerant she had found was exceptionally strong, byproduct of assassinating rogue scientists usually meant seeing shit that made no sense by conventional measure. Whatever it was these people had done didn’t matter to Natasha. The hospital fire would not occur for another several years, leaving the Black Widow with ample time to accrue blood on her hands that she had no real grasp on the immensity of. It hardly seemed important at the time.

 

Natasha sat on a distant log fence, perched low enough to be mistaken for a fence post if someone happened past and caught the glow of the burning house. No one was going to pass by. This place was isolated by design. These people aimed to stay hidden for the rest of their lives – a feat that might have proved doable if not for the infamous Black Widow being given the assignment of their demise. Infamous. Natasha dug a boot into the cold hard dirt only enough to pill it a little, disturb the smoothness of what had likely been frozen solid for months until recently.

 

She usually didn’t fidget. Natasha considered the possibility of potassium deficiency. What she couldn’t know, wouldn’t recognize for years to come, were the stirrings of a mostly buried conscience trying to remind her that it existed.

 

The closest thing to a friend she’d had in the Red Room had failed the final assignment. She had failed to pull a trigger without hesitation, startled by the terrified wailing of the man blindfolded in front of her. Madame had turned and give Natasha – Natalia – a curt nod that spoke the simplest and cruelest of demands, and Natasha turned to Yulia, raised her gun, and pulled the trigger.

 

Yulia hadn’t flinched, perhaps because she’d had no time to beg for consideration but even in that millisecond before Natasha put a bullet between the girl’s wide blue eyes, she saw no moves for self-preservation. She had known she’d failed. This was the accepted punishment. Natasha remembered Yulia braiding her hair, remembered her slender fingers twining through the dyed red and twisting it into ropes before training; they never hugged or whispered secrets or gossiped like normal girls, but this act of succor haunted Natasha well into adulthood, to the point where letting anyone touch her hair put her on edge. It was a reminder of a casual kindness that neither the giver nor the receiver were able to afford and was ultimately paid for in blood spatter against the mirror of a ballet studio where girls came to become killers.

 

Yulia rarely crossed her mind, but tonight Natasha was having trouble focusing on anything else as she watched the flames crack the roof, the tiles falling into the widening chasm like the flapping of dark wings descending into hell. In ten minutes, the fire would be roaring, too close to sit even this far away from.

 

There was a train waiting sixteen miles away; it would be a short drive on the ATV she’d used to slip up close to the house back to the edge of the city and then another brisk walk until she could close her eyes, try to catch a nap if hyper-vigilance allowed.

 

It would be years before she would meet Clint Barton and gain a friend for life. It would be years before she’d have the nightmares that Clint was standing right where Yulia stood and she didn’t even hesitate, shot him right in the face, put him down like a dog when ordered to. Even later would come the days where she would see Bucky Barnes again, the image of the Winter Soldier one of the only things able to strike fear into the Black Widow’s heart no matter how carefully she could keep it off her face.

 

With nary a clue in her wildest dreams of what was coming, Natasha stood and collected her fuel can, remembering the way the woman had screamed in fury when she had pulled the trigger all too quickly, all too efficiently.

 

 

 

Budapest

July 2007

 

 

Natasha will look back at this trip and marvel at the fact that she somehow not only tricked Clint Barton into not killing her, but that from those seeds of mercy he planted would spring the most fulfilling relationship in her life to date. She had no way of knowing the steely-eyed archer would become her closest friend, that he would be the person she could tell absolutely anything to with no fear of rejection or misunderstanding. All she knew was that this man had an order and he blatantly disregarded it in lieu of what he felt was the right thing to do, and that was a confidence she envied to the core of her bones, whether she’d admit it out loud or not.

 

They sat at a table in a small restaurant – public enough that if Natasha decided to make a last-ditch effort at capping him and escaping she’d have little chance of doing so unnoticed, small enough that a firefight wouldn’t put too many lives at risk – and drank tea in relative silence until Clint asked her why.

 

“Is that a rhetorical question?” Natasha dodged artfully, sipping to avoid speaking.

 

“Very clever, answer the question.”

 

Natasha licked her lips and paused, considering the immensity of the question and wondering how in the hell she could ever hope to explain herself, afraid that the wrong answer would undo this offer of absolution he had extended to her.

 

“Hey,” he said, leaning over to catch her eyes from whatever middle-distance they constantly sought out, “I’m not your enemy here.”

 

Natasha scoffed into her teacup before sitting it down, squaring her shoulders to stare back at him with the kind of certainty she had perfected pretending.

 

“You were three hours ago.”

 

“That was three hours ago,” he responded as though it were the simplest goddamn thing on earth, as though there were infinite chances for redemption if all she bothered to do was ask for one, “This is now.”

 

 

 

Krasnoyarsk Krai

April 3rd, 2004

 

 

Natasha leaned her head against the window and watched the ice cold scenery blur together, listening to the echoes of fired gunshots that all sound the same. Gunshots that could have been killing anyone from her memory. It all sounded the same.

 

It wasn’t until a hundred miles out that she even realized she’d burned her hand setting the house on fire, watching the screaming pink skin impassively as pain began to shoot through her arm past the fading adrenaline of the kill.

 

She wondered where on earth this train was going.

 

 

 

 

 


	7. Close Your Mouth, Be Softer, Prettier (Peggy)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Memory, Age 21_
> 
> _“This is extraordinarily unbecoming, Miss Carter,” cautions her recruitment officer as he slaps a file down on his desk for emphasis, “You are being handed valuable information and given an opportunity to help aid America in the war by doing your clerical duty. Every job here is important, and yet you’re insinuating that what we’re offering you isn’t good enough.”_
> 
> _“It isn’t,” Peggy fires back through those painted red lips and sharp brows, “Not for me.”_
> 
> "I have lived a life." Peggy, in so many memories.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Pretty sure y'all didn't ask for a book, but uh, here's seven pages. 
> 
> Spoilers (ish) for: Agent Carter, Agents of SHIELD, Captain America: Civil War
> 
> I say "ish" because a lot of Peggy's MCU timeline is murky - though I found a tumblr specifically on the subject that helped a lot - and contradictory in places (Michael is listed as her only sibing, he died childless in WW2, but she has grand nieces and nephews?). Whether or not Peggy had children of her own is a hot point of contention, but I erred on the side of "no" because I felt it would be the road less traveled. 
> 
> CW: Period typical sexism

# Close Your Mouth, Be Softer, Prettier

Requested by unourssonggeur

_Peggy Carter, Introspection_

 

Press Play – “Echo," Helen Jane Long

 

 

 

Memory, Age 7

 

“Red rover, red rover, send Peggy right over!”

 

The wall of boys’ arms is nearly impossible to break – so to the point that many girls do not even bother playing this game in the schoolyard anymore, choosing instead to pay hopscotch or jump rope – but Peggy aims straight for the linked arms of Bobby O’Dougherty and Martin Cummings, ready for a brick wall’s resistance. Even now she is all brown curls and furrowed brow, a set disposition for danger and fearless in the way that little girls are before the world dulls down their edges to make them safer to brush against. The boys are a formidable force already – no one has ever told them that they couldn’t be – and little Margaret Carter is having absolutely none of their shit.

 

The boys cheat the way they always do and swing their arms hard to meet her shove, knocking her back so hard her teeth clack. She tastes blood when she hits the ground, the laughter of little boys rising to meet her as she sits up to glare angrily up at her assailants.

 

“You’re cheating,” she hisses, realizing one of her teeth has been knocked loose.

 

“Oi? Whatcha gonna do about it, Peggy?” one of them asks in a sneer.

 

The shiny patent of her Mary Jane shoe comes flying out and nails him directly in the shin with all the force she’s got, which is considerable. He folds in a prepubescent screech as the headmistress comes over to admonish everyone involved, especially Peggy for being in the dirt when she arrives.

 

“You’re a girl,” she sighs in exasperation as she watches the school nurse gently pull the loosened tooth, “You’ve got to learn the rules sooner or later, Margaret.”

 

“Yes headmistress,” Peggy lies through her now-missing tooth.

 

 

Memory, Age 15

 

Peggy could continue her one girl assault on sexism by demanding to be let in with the boys, or she can make herself a formidable opponent and wait for someone to notice.

 

Very few people notice.

 

 

Memory, Age 18

 

Peggy begins to wear makeup at her mother’s insistence. _Be softer, prettier,_ she begs in so many words.

 

At first, Peggy hates it, feels like it’s an acquiescence to the life she’s fought tooth and nail to avoid falling into – marriage, children, housewifery. However, once she sees herself in the mirror with that crimson painted onto her lips, she smiles.

 

It looks like warpaint, not an admittance of defeat. The screaming red gash of her mouth is painted on so perfectly, so precisely that it’s almost a weapon in and of itself. It makes her feel powerful, demanding; every set of eyes in the room will be on those lips when she speaks.

 

She doesn’t look docile. She looks absolutely powerful.

 

 

Memory, Age 19

 

Peggy stands in a wedding dress she’ll never put on again (for a wedding that she’ll never have) and watches her mother collapse in the driveway as men in green suits grab at her, trying to keep her steady.

 

Her brother Michael has been killed in action.

 

 

Memory, Age 21

 

“This is extraordinarily unbecoming, Miss Carter,” cautions her recruitment officer as he slaps a file down on his desk for emphasis, “You are being handed valuable information and given an opportunity to help aid America in the war by doing your clerical duty. Every job here is important, and yet you’re insinuating that what we’re offering you isn’t good enough.”

 

“It isn’t,” Peggy fires back through those painted red lips and sharp brows, “Not for me.”

 

“Then maybe you need to adjust your high standards,” he responds with the same sneer she’s seen on men all her goddamn life, “You’re never going to find a husband that will tolerate your attitude, no matter how pretty you are.”

 

 

Memory, Age 22

 

Fuck the entire lot of them, because Peggy joins the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force.

 

Their trainer calls her Rubber Ass – “knock her down on her ass, she’s right back up!” – and she shows impressive aptitude for hand to hand, but that’s only a small fraction of what she’s here to learn.  

 

 

Memory, Age 23

 

“If you had been more ladylike, you would have a husband by now,” female relatives caution.

 

They range from well-meaning all the way to cruel and vicious.

 

“You’re wasting a beautiful face.”

 

“No one respects you the way you think you’re going to be respected, so you might as well give up now.”

 

“The men don’t need your help fighting a war, they need you at home raising children.”

 

“If you’d ever been fucked properly, you wouldn’t be here trying to do a man’s job.” That one earned someone a punch in the mouth with every ounce of fury Peggy could level behind it.

 

 

Memory, Age 24

 

Steve Rogers’ beautiful blue eyes send a rock straight to the pit of her stomach from the first time she meets him, skinny and small and all wistful hopes. The kindred spirit she sees in his refusal to stop fighting goes without words, even if he doesn’t think to see it himself at first. Neither one of them was supposed to make it out of the bottom; neither one should have ended up where they were going. It was pure grit and determination, a refusal to be kept down that kept them both from living out the dull existences laid before them.

 

Of course, Captain America got the be the hero out loud. Peggy Carter remained a reluctantly respected pariah in her field, as capable as any man in any army but unsung while she watches Steve go from beanpole to beefcake, glorified service monkey to national hero.

 

In another life, she’d have worn the stars and stripes herself.

 

 

Memory, Age 25

 

Steve Rogers is dead. Peggy is bereft. The world loses its color for a little while. Any memories here are weighted with the texture of sadness.

 

 

Memory, Age 30

 

Peggy’s wedding dress – round two, the one that actually sticks – is simple and pretty, a monument to her no-fuss methodology that will be preserve in yellowing mantelpiece pictures for the rest of her life. Her husband is handsome, the sense of peace she’s accomplished in her time as close to complete as it’s likely to ever be, but she can’t help standing in front of her full-length mirror and remembering when Captain America asked her to save him a dance.

 

 

Memory, Age 33

 

Peggy has stopped answering questions about why she doesn’t have any children, responding only with a humorless stare. It’s a lot easier than the canned explanations she could be giving about work, about her career, about a simple lack of desire to do so; she just fixes her gaze and holds theirs until they uncomfortably flinch away or demand to know what’s wrong with her. It will be another several decades before she watches women flippantly disclose that they don’t want children without a dramatically appalled reaction and can’t help but envy them that.

 

Still, people’s reactions to her refusal to engage in stupid conversations makes her smile quietly to herself. At least she’s still making waves.

 

 

Memory, Age 40

 

Peggy is honored for her contributions and her leadership of S.H.I.E.L.D. She’s a living legend. The day is not marred with sadness or regret or memories of what’s been lost – it’s beautiful from start to finish.

 

In a company car on the way from the ceremony, Howard Stark smiles over at her, and the deep sense of comradery between them defies convention. He hasn’t made a move to take her hand alluringly or try to kiss her since the early days of S.H.I.E.L.D., and she’s grateful for a long, quiet moment with no trademark Stark smarm to ruin it. It’s the most honest they’ve ever been with each other.

 

Howard Stark’s eyes glitter with tears. Peggy doesn’t speak. They both know too much to say a word.

 

 

Memory, Age 46

 

Peggy Carter hears the word “feminist” for the first time. It feels like coming home to roost.

 

 

Memory, Age 51

 

The niece who will give birth to Peggy’s grand-niece Sharon is born. She’ll have Sharon young, too young by conventional standards, and Peggy will be the only relative who stands in her corner and refuses to shame her.

 

Maria Stark gives birth to her and Howard’s only child, the sole heir to the Stark throne. Peggy holds Tony in his soft blue blanket and marvels at his big eyes, how he shifts so quickly from screaming for attention to quiet and observant, his gaze already preternaturally sharp for an infant.

 

“This one is going to be trouble,” she tells Howard, who grins.

 

 

Memory, Age 58

 

Tony is already blazing through records and setting precedents for IQ in children his age. Howard seems distracted most of the time, long absent from the halls of leadership of S.H.I.E.L.D. and busy instead with weapons of mass destruction on a scale the world has never seen. He’s taken the patent for megadeath yields and brought them screaming horribly into the new age, powerful beyond measure by wealth and influence. Peggy’s husband hates him quietly but deals with their friendship, knowing it’s beyond his understanding and it’s going to stay that way.

 

_These youths, they’re only growing more and more restless_ , she thinks as she looks around at the ever increasing dissatisfaction with the state of the world. Many of her peers think it’s all going to hell in a handbasket – the anti-military protests, women burning their bras, the sexual revolution, drugs – but somehow, Peggy can’t shake a deeply rooted sense of looking up, that maybe the cultural tides are changing towards something new if nothing else, stranger if not better.

 

Women certainly aren’t treated exceptionally well but Peggy wonders sometimes if they can truly appreciate where they stand, having no idea whose back they’ve climbed along to get there. Of course, this only applies to some women – she’s not naïve enough to pretend the advancements of white women have extended all the way down the social stratum to everyone else – but no one has told her to “know her place” in at least two decades.

 

No one tells Peggy’s nieces to be softer, prettier. No one tells them to close their mouths. She’s helped raise them to believe they can breathe fire.

 

 

Memory, Age 66

 

The retirement party from S.H.I.E.L.D. is one for the ages.

 

Peggy watches the banners wave in the air conditioning as she turns to cast one more long glance into the main hall.

 

This is the end of an era, truly.

 

 

Memory, Age 72

 

Howard and Maria die in a car crash. Peggy loses one of her oldest friends, but the sad reality is they’ve barely spoken in years – the difference in ideology has become so wide and chasm-like that there was hardly anything to fill the silence hanging between them.

 

She reaches out to Tony but never hears back.

 

 

Memory, Age 77

 

Peggy holds newborn Sharon in her arms and her heart is so full it could burst. She’s loved every niece and nephew, every family member that’s ever come and gone, but there is something special about Sharon that she just can’t place. Her husband adores her, Peggy tries not to openly favor her but it’s no distress to the other “kids”, who are all grown now anyway.

 

“Little one, the world is your oyster,” she whispers to her in the hospital, smiling widely as her niece’s new husband snaps a photo that will live on mantelpieces for years after her own death, “Eat it whole.”

 

 

Memory, Age 80

 

There are times when Peggy can’t remember her own mother’s name.

 

 

Memory, Age 82

 

It’s a brand new millennium now. Peggy can hardly believe her luck in growing old enough to see it.

 

 

Memory, Age 83

 

Her beloved husband, partner of 52 years, has a heart attack and dies in the hospital where Sharon was born. Peggy comes home to a house full of nieces and nephews, grand and otherwise, all clamoring to be with her, help her muddle through this difficult time. Five year old Sharon draws her pictures of flowers with thick, waxy crayons and there is more food than could conceivably be eaten in a reasonable length of time. The house is filled with flowers.

 

All Peggy wants is to be alone with her grief. It’s like losing Steve, losing Howard, losing a hundred others who have come and gone before her, loss hardly a unique experience to her or anyone else, and yet it’s so much harder.

 

The garden they have tended together grows wild through that summer, untamed and untended. Peggy smiles when she watches the morning glory bloom across the fence in the early hours and remembers his warm hands.

 

 

Memory, Age 86

 

“Private, get your commanding officer, I should like to have a word with him about your uniform,” Peggy croaks from a hospital bed at a young nurse, who stares at her in frightened sympathy.

 

Sharon cries into her hands when Peggy calls her “Lucy”, her mother’s name, and asks for her husband.

 

 

Memory, Age 93

 

The first time she opens her eyes from an afternoon nap to see Steve Rogers sitting by her bedside, Peggy is so far into her dementia that she doesn’t have the capacity to question it, only staring back at him with eyes wide. It takes everything in Steve’s body not to sob like a lost child when her mouth curls into a smile, the spark of defiance in Peggy’s eyes still there throughout it all, a spirit that wasn’t going to be conquered by any sort of illness or time that recognized the kindred in him.

 

“Peggy,” he whispers, reaching for her hand, surprised despite himself at how thin her skin feels.

 

“I knew you’d come back,” she said almost slyly, eyes glittering with happy tears.

 

They would have this interaction a hundred times with varying degrees of emotional response each time. Peggy cries most of the time – Steve does his best not to.

 

 

Memory, Age 95

 

_Red rover, red rover, send Peggy right over_.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


	8. Unashamed and Sacrificial (Jessica)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _She’s stunning. What’s better is she’s stunning and doesn’t fucking care – a lethal combination for you if your history with female partners is consulted._
> 
>  
> 
> A dirty vignette with Jessica Jones and a female reader.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you missed the "Announcement!" bulletin, here's the short of it - I can now be located on Tumblr at noccalula-writes, and there is another big project coming soon. 
> 
> But, back to our regularly scheduled programming. 
> 
> This is f/f smut, no spoilers unless you're unaware of who Jessica Jones is, quick and dirty for my dearest Ka. <3

# Unashamed and Sacrificial

Requested by AgentInfinity

_Jessica Jones/female reader_

 

Press Play: “Sober,” Niykee Heaton

 

 

You watch the tall, dark silhouette of her shape move against the curtains, windows lit only from the city streetlights, as she comes back toward the bed. She’s long and lean and deceptively graceful as she pulls a cigarette to her lips, breathing in deeply as you watch the lighter spark the cherry in the dark. You can see the curling wisps of smoke against that backlighting, smell her particular brand (Marlboro Reds because why fuck around) as she comes back to the bed and collapses beside you with surprising heft, your shitty mattress rocking with the movement.

 

“Pretty sure I can feel every spring in my back,” she says dryly as you look over, watching the curvature of her features.

 

It’s just dark enough and you’re well-adjusted to it by now, able to see her pretty clearly all things considered: the elegant slope of her oddly specific nose, her full lips, the heavy lids of her eyes fringed with thick black lashes. She’s stunning. What’s better is she’s stunning and doesn’t fucking care – a lethal combination for you if your history with female partners is consulted.

 

“Yeah, well,” you stretch with a grunt, turning onto your side to drape back against said shitty mattress, “Steal me a new one from somewhere or quit complaining.”

 

Jessica doesn’t smirk but you know she doesn’t take offense, either – it’s rare that even the crack of a smile comes, but she’s softer here with you than she is in the streets. There’s no biting response, just the long slow drag of her cigarette and a swirling of gray smoke out of her nostrils.

 

“Just sayin’. It’s like a third of your life, you oughta invest.”

 

You were barely listening, watching the artwork of those plumes twisting up and away until they pull into nothingness before your eyes are back on her full lips. Those lips, those dark eyes had caught you from across the crowded bar before you had ever even said a word to one another. She was there with a beautiful blonde – famous, you recognized although it was not later until you knew it was Trish Walker – and you thought that was that, your chances were shot. You’d long since gone back to drinking at the bar with your friends when she finally approached. There weren’t many words exchanged – she wasn’t quite drunk but had definitely had a few and you were right there with her – as you watched her knock back another shot of shitty whiskey and lick the traces off those thick, pink lips.

 

The rest of the night was spent fixated on her mouth. The rest of most of your nights together were.

 

Tonight they’re pinker and puffier than usual – you’re a biter, she likes this about you – from friction, suck-swollen and curved into the slightest frown. Jessica is so lean and long, all plush mouth and dark fringe lashes over doe eyes that it’s almost funny, bordering on ironic how crass and brash she is in contrast to how almost cartoonishly feminine she looks. Hard-femme at its finest.

Your hand slips across the flatness of her pale stomach and she cuts her eyes over at you, expression unreadable until you’re climbing over her, pinning her beneath you. It’s a ruse. She could toss you off of her, off the bed, out of the fucking window if she was so inclined and maybe in a way that made this twice as thrilling; Jessica was powerful beyond standard measures, and it was a little like licking an electrical socket to toy with. The danger was thrilling.

 

“Oh yeah?” she asks with a hint of amusement, reaching out to ash her cigarette into the dish.

 

“Yeah,” you respond, soft lips finding her collarbone, her neck as your breasts brush hers.

 

It’s no time until you’re back between her legs, listening to the gasps and rough little groans, feeling those little micro-shivers of her pussy against your mouth and tongue. She’s shaved slick, pale and feather-soft with that gash of slick-wet, bright pink that gets your mouth watering before you can even smell her; she doesn’t even typically like being eaten out per her own admission (“I guess I prefer ten fingers to one tongue”) but the sounds she’s making tell you that this isn’t just to humor you. Besides, you’re a woman of many skills and this is unequivocally one of them.

 

Jessica comes with you happily humming into her cunt, reaching down after the first to grab your head and keep you right there, _right there oh fuck right there_ until she’s coming again, gushing wet against your chin and sending your ego straight into peak inflation. You’re still steadily sucking her clit when she pulls you away just a touch shy of too rough and flips you onto your back – she’s right, you _can_ feel every spring, goddamn.

 

The breath knocked from you comes back in a gasp when she stares down at you, watches you squirm as her knees force your legs spread wide and her fingers grip bruises into your arms. You’re a butterfly pinned to a board beneath her, exposed and trapped, unashamed and sacrificial and there comes that curve of a near-smile across her lips.

 

“Fuck,” you exhale softly.

 

 


End file.
